War Springs Eternal
by Stjernefald
Summary: A Super Saiyan appears once every thousand years… a single Saiyan who overcomes the wall which no warrior, no matter how gifted, can overcome. Enemies close in on all sides of this being of legend. Enemies courting immortality above all else. And the fate of the universe hangs in the crux of an unlikely band of rebels. But as Goku quickly learned - on Namek war springs eternal.
1. Prologue – Years on Foreign Soil

**Prologue – Years on Foreign Soil**

* * *

I guess our timelines differ quite a bit, huh?

I mean, if what you're telling me is even remarkably close to the truth, then – once I turned Super Saiyan – I defeated Frieza and made my escape just before Namek detonated in on itself. Which, correct me here, only happened because Frieza made one last desperate bit for victory?

That it? Yup. I don't buy it. Not at all.

If only things had been _that_ clear-cut and smooth. Look, I get it. I do. I can see the resemblance. You look a lot like Vegeta, Trunks. A lot. It's uncanny! I feel the urge to hurt you rising within me! But he died here. I know he did. Trust me, _I_ know. He died. And after everything he did… all the people he killed… he won't be brought back. Not now. Not ever.

So – and Bulma really is the one you should be talking to about this, but I'll try my best to make sense of it – if you're not going to exist in this world… which you won't – at least not in the same way and with the same genetic make-up… then it stands to reason that things could differ here in an endless amount of ways, right? We agree on that? Just the fact that you traveled here and succeeded, when it is obvious that that never happened in your timeline, should tell us something.

I mean – follow my train of thought for a moment, please. You've traveled across a beam – a rift in reality itself – that holds the key to eternity – you might even have glimpsed it, man. And as you glided there aside dimensions of space and time… untouched… You could theoretically have had an effect on everything. Or nothing at all. Who's to say that there even is one single world resembling this one? Or yours for that matter?

Who's to say I – or even any other version of me – would even catch this deadly virus you claim will take my life in a couple of years?

You claim that Frieza's only relation were his father where you're from. I'm telling you in our world… universe or time or however you wanna… quantify it, I guess? He had a brother, too. His name was Cooler. Man… Talking about sibling rivalry. I'm telling you I have never witnessed hatred that ran that deep. And their father – you're telling me he's weaker than Frieza? No. Not here – he's the monster in charge. He played them out against each other. Provided them with armies to play with… countless men forced to die in the midst of their petty schemes and riots against one another. So much blood… Namek ran wild in rivers of crimson sin by the end of it all. We almost turned color blind to the sight of blood… in the end we had to. Get use to it, I mean.

It was like a sickness you slowly became immune for.

And I've seen him, you know. Once. King Cold. From across planets. I didn't see him with my eyes, I saw him with my heart as we passed him by in an ocean of stars. I _felt_ – _him_.

And androids. You're talking about androids? Fuck them! Fuck the future, Trunks! The past isn't over! He's still out there. King Cold is still out there. He will come for us. For me. Long before whatever disease I'll catch may get me.

We were on Namek for years – not days as you claim. Years where our friends were left waiting either in the limbo of afterlife or on Earth, waiting for us to come through for them, waiting for us to get back to them, to resume some semblance of normalcy.

Waiting for us to liberate the entire universe from the hands of the Cold family.

We got back all right. But we haven't accomplished anything. Even me – and with all the power this form provided for me – the only victory I could achieve was a temporary armistice.

I'll keep your medicine on the off chance that you might be right about this, at least, and I'll urge you to join forces with us in the upcoming battle – whatever that battle may be – but you might find that your power has been… severely limited by coming here.

You see, Trunks, you claim to have achieved the power of a Super Saiyan – that where you're from every Saiyan with enough power and incentive could theoretically achieve it.

That makes no sense.

If that had been the case, if that kind of power was within the reach of every single Saiyan, then it wouldn't have taken a race as battle crazy, as battle experienced, and as filled with bloodlust as ours a thousand years to achieve it. The form would have been everywhere – throughout our history. In clear sight and abundance. And the Saiyans – not the Cold family – would have ruled the universe with our vile temper and fragile pride.

You can't transform here. Believe me. Try it if you don't. Neither can Gohan. I spent years on Namek trying to teach it to him. Years. He got more powerful than I was when I first transformed. It didn't make a damn difference. And I can't escape this form whenever it is convenient, either. This _is_ my form now. This is how I look. I can't shift back and forth at will. I'm a blondie now, as Bulma put it.

My Nimbus won't carry me anymore. The Saiyan I'd long forgotten was awoken – and it tainted my once pure heart. There's a constant struggle within me now.

Chichi didn't like it, either. Granted that was not the only thing she didn't like. Perhaps it was even the thing she least didn't like. If you can put it that way.

Power is finite, as it should be. Limits do exist – as they must. Just not for a Super Saiyan. And such power mustn't flow freely through multiple of souls. It mustn't. Only catastrophe and awry ambition ensues.

It belongs to me this power now. For better or worse. For the first time in a millennium, the legend has arisen.

I have ascended past all strings. I have peeked beyond perceived limits to a world beyond. A world unbound. And I am the one that comes whenever a living soul cries out for peace. I am the light in the universe. The light in the eternal darkness.

I am Son Goku, the Saiyan from Earth. I am legend made real.

I am… the Legendary Super Saiyan.

* * *

 _Hello Folks!_

 _This is the prologue to a new Dragon Ball story of mine. It is, as you can probably already guess, heavily AU. Differences will, if I do it right, be revealed as the story goes on. But it follows the story of the original Dragon Ball story until the Namek Saga, where it differs in certain ways. From here I will take certain liberties with the Dragon Ball lore - as will also become clear hopefully. Take it for fresh spin and see where it goes._

 _If you've read this far, then I thank you. And I hope to see you soon for the first chapter in War Springs Eternal._

 _Oh, and just to be sure - I don't know if this is still a thing? - I don't own any shred of Dragon Ball. There. That should do it._

 _See ya._


	2. Bleeding Memory

**Bleeding Memory**

* * *

The world blurred to my sight, becoming muddy, becoming… less tangible in its entirety. Senses frayed, nauseous sensations tethered to my being, I stepped back from the barbell, which had become my instrument of self-destruction for the day.

Tears of blood, crimson and thick, escaped the edges of my woeful eyes – a silent testament to the level of effort I'd performed – and I closed them shut and turned my havocked senses onwards, across the barren planes of a lost world in a lost pocket of a lost universe – none of which was my own.

Nothing was my own save for my foes, of which there were plenty. Of which there were all too fucking many.

Armies. Titans.

I could feel _them_ – growing. Expanding day by day. Expanding to something a little aside any measure of rational conceptualization. Expanding since that fatal day – the catalyst to _our_ – universal – misery.

I had to keep up. I needed to keep up.

But mostly, I _wanted_ to keep up. And I think, in the end, that made all the difference.

I opened my eyes anew – alit with the same eternal flame that had always sustained me – a fresh batch of crimson tears almost bursting out, and beheld the monitor in the Gravity Chamber. Reading the display with a scorn born out of a horrifically desperate need to improve.

It's not enough, I thought. I won't be enough.

The number _500_ read across the screen in clear digitalized numbers and I gave a silent thank you once more to Bulma for the upgrades she'd been able to make to the room over the years. Finding gratitude for gratitude's sake above all else.

But, sensing Frieza's and Cooler's power – which I could almost feel daily – that amount of resistance just wasn't enough. They were growing. Constantly. Seeking limits. Fighting them. Defying them.

Limitless fighting.

Limitless limits?

Yeah.

They were shinning – twin glowering radiances on a darkened canvas – bright to my senses like a starry web in the dark. Like beacons in the night, leading me to a gate of hell – all of my own creation. And I was trespassing on the borders of the fiery pits below. Afraid. Mad. And, above all, excited beyond belief.

Yet they scared me.

Fuck.

I'd never been this scared of anything in the course of my time. Tempted me, too, with their ostentatious, otherworldly power… but mostly just scared the shit _outta_ me.

I hated being scared. Hated it. Even as a kid I hadn't felt this level of uncertainty in the face of adversity. Even as I was now, a being of myth, a being beyond the clutches of all understanding, these creatures seemed to leap across the dimensions of reality, as if touched by the infernal light of hell itself, and grew in strength on nothing more than the will and desire to do so.

Oh. What had I wrought? What had I set in motion that day? What desire to improve had I inspired? In a soul so dark it beget nothing but violence and vitriol, I had yanked into being an ambition that couldn't be quenched by nothing else but immortality and my demise.

I needed to keep improving, too.

I stepped up to the barbell – a rage within that was more instinct than sheer will – bent down and grabbed it, and yanked it off the ground once more. Back screaming, hamstrings burning at once, blood immediately started pouring out of every orifice of my body as the internal blood pressure rose fantastically in response to my great toils.

Gently, in control, I placed it back down – lest the ground should crack beneath the weight – and immediately reversed, yanking it off the floor once more. And so another set resumed, this time, I decided mid-set, it would only end when my body gave way to the pressure of the bar and the heightened gravity.

About two minutes into it, every fiber of every muscle on fire, I could sense my technique begin to break down, as the same watery existence touched my eyes and muddled up the world to my sight. Made the sensory existence split down the middle in awry, disjointed rivulets.

And at last, losing count miles and ages ago of reps or time, the bar reached to about the knees, hovered there as we fought the ageless dance of the unstoppable and the immovable, before something in the back of my left eye gave way to the pressure and exploded… and I lost the sight of that eye completely.

Then, as if on cue, my hamstring snapped – clean off the very bones and joints the muscles were attached to.

As a result of all this a jolt of pure agony shot up through my entire posterior chain and I lost my rhythm and compromised my back. In response, which was immediate, it gave a violent crack, of which conjured a sound of pure violence that seemed to resonate across the barren world, and I flopped to the ground.

About as lifeless as a fish out of water.

The floor gave a petty moan as it cracked with a sense of destiny beneath the weight of the bar, and a spidery web of tendrils coalesced all round my shaky, exhausted feet.

Screaming and laughing in abject horror of my own doing – which was of equal agony and ecstasy and stupendous madness – I jumped backwards – using pure will in place of torn muscle and shredded bones – performing a twist and a flip in midair. Releasing white-hot Ki blasts flicker-quick, I let them circle the chamber so that they sought straight back at me. Closing my eyes and letting myself be guided by instinct deeper than knowledge, I danced across the invisible path in the air, a path envisioned in the lithe smoke of my mind, and narrowly dodged to and fro through the bright spheres of raw energy.

I landed gracefully on the other side, sensing the spheres turn in pursuit of me, body wrecked and jolting with thunder-like lances of suffering, and – having evaded every one of them – I let my body and mind numb to a complete stillness. I was satisfied that I, even through mind-numbing fatigue and pain and sheer brokenness, was capable of keeping all of my wits about me.

I'd succeed my goal for the day. Small steps. Always forward. That's all it is.

That's all it ever was.

I turned, a smile with a touch of a grimace on the edges of my lips, for I knew this was gonna fucking hurt, and spread my arms out and bared myself completely to absorb the blows of my own energy.

And then there they were. Upon me. Devouring me. Wholly.

One after the other they slammed into me, throwing me around the room like a kite in the howling wind. And as the last one struck me on the left side of my face, smashing it in completely – the final touches of my suffering, man – the world blackened and I felt myself crash into the wall with great force, felt the cage that had become my church rattle, felt the gravitational force lessen as Dende let it off so that he could in the greatest of haste get to me and save me – for but a moment, at least – from my own obsessive madness.

I felt him enter the room just as the blackness claimed me. And in that blackness, wherein horrors grow and tether to our burning regrets, my failure always found me. Screaming an image so distorted it belonged in a world of nightmares unbound.

Even now, years gone by, I could see us just as clear on that day. In an unforgiving universe. Unforgiving minute.

Golden hue.

Purple flame.

Collide on air – and the air itself is on fire. Liquid heat aflame on a drowning world.

My form burned with newly realized energy as I stood opposed to Frieza. I was barely able to contain it all into some form of cohesive substance of worth. Frieza, who long since had realized that he needed to go all the way in order to best me, proved just as unfamiliar with his true power.

Two toddlers playing with their new toys for the keys to the kingdom, that's all we were.

"I AM FRIEZA – RULER OF THE UNIVERSE! I AM THE ULTIMATE POWER OF ALL EXISTENCE! NOW YOU DIE, MONKEY!"

"Again with the name calling," I muttered, shielding my eyes with my forearm against the flying debris that howled around in the currents of Frieza's mighty flux of power. "LOOK AT YOU! YOUR ENERGY IS OUT OF CONTROL! YOU'VE NEVER DARED TO TOUCH THIS LEVEL BEFORE, HAVE YOU?"

"I DON'T NEED CONTROL TO KILL YOU!"

It was foolish words, screamed across a pocket of air on fire, screamed to convince himself of his supremacy, screamed for screaming sake. His supremacy, his rule, had fallen in the wake of my ascension.

Ascension to a higher kind – the highest kind of all existence. The kin of olden legends and the make-believe. The only kind that ever mattered. The one to rule the rulers. To break the broken upon broken lands in broken times.

Are we all broken, Trunks? At the end? I think maybe yes. Maybe so.

Before me floated a creature that singlehandedly had tortured and burned his way across the universe for longer than I'd been alive. While I'd been carrying around milk on a mostly deserted island during training with Master Roshi, Frieza had burned entire worlds to the ground and sold them to the highest offer – all while using only a tiny speck of his true strength.

It was a preposterous thought that that same boy would grow up to become equal to a terror of the universe who's like existence had never known.

And yet.

Ascension to a higher kind…

Arcs of accursed light surged round Frieza's glowing form, forking like lightning through the air betwixt us.

I clenched my fist, smirking, half-laughing, drunk on a power of olden age and timelessness. Drunk on a myth. I had strength unfathomable, immovable. Undeniable. I was at the peak at last! There could be no strength greater than this! I was strength! The last frontier to all potential!

I yelled. Screamed. Cried.

 _Laughed_.

"Ascension to a higher kind, _motherfucker_!"

A force beyond anything I'd ever been touched by collided with a resounding boom across my cheek, displacing the very air around us with the force of the blow – and I felt Frieza's cold fist sink into my cheek.

He gave it his all and I felt it – just _barely_.

I'd been careless, though, hardly even comprehended his presence as anything other than an inconsequential creature of the dirt beneath one's boot.

His manic laugh, of which had been great when he thought he'd dealt a grand blow to my strength, faltered when he saw me crane my neck slowly back to him, our eyes meeting… centimeters betwixt us in a fiery storm of our creation.

" _Impossible_!" he snarled across the space of a foot, across the space of eternity, across the space of forever and never – right into my face. His eyes were of murder unleashed.

"HA!" I roared right back into his face.

My hand, barely moving an inch, struck him right into his chest, right over his heart, and he doubled over in anguish, the air escaping him. Behind him, a ripple of air and an explosion of sluggish, deafening noise boomed across the empty, barren world of Namek. As if I'd pushed aside the very air itself.

Maybe I did.

" _No_ …" Frieza, voice devoid of strength all of a sudden, glared with sheer disbelief. "You can't win! _Impossible_! _IMPOSSIBLE_!"

He jumped back, tensed, and extended every fiber of himself, screaming in utter defiance against the darkened, broken sky.

" _You dare defy me, Saiyan_! _ME_!" Frieza, his attitude growing in the face of an unwelcomed reality, had become a channel to everything I'd ever sought to overcome. A beacon of pure evil and ill intent.

But I was the final realization of everything I'd ever been and would ever be – everything I'd ever sought to defy, to challenge, to own up to, coursed through my veins with a vigour never before beheld in the universe. I was the last manifestation of defiance against the darkness never-ending, the blackness ever-reaching.

I was the Super Saiyan.

Slowly, we approached each other, until there was but a pocket of space in between us, face-to-face, identical sparks of violence and hatred burning in our eyes.

And then we moved.

And the world moved with us.

We went berserk! Obliterating madness lit the sky aflame. An ocean of liquid fire ignited the grounds below as we let loose – and Namek _burned_ in the light of our hatred. The sky rippled as if on fire beneath the pressure of our strength. The forces of our blows alone threw us across the sky of this barren world, of which almost all life long since lost its way, and we fought for this silent place – for this silent, unforgiving universe.

For this one unforgiving minute in a time that long since stopped moving.

Pure energy and power beyond my comprehension flowed through me, sustaining my flight, my continuous streak of multicolored beams of power, my strikes and kicks and blocks… I was the force of all I'd never dared to dream I could become.

I laughed. There was a touch of insanity in it, but mostly, well, mostly I was just excited. To be frank, boss, I don't think I'd ever been more excited in my life!

Every blow, even those that failed to connect, boomed and razed out to touch upon the souls of every living corner of the world of Namek; it touched every living being on this desolate place of the universe.

Throwing himself bodily at me, I caught his hands in mine, faces inches apart, snarling and laughing and spitting and bleeding at each other. This wasn't fighting; this was war. This was violence. _Hate_. He swung his tail round and at my face, but I flipped myself over, evading his blow and pushing off of him with my legs.

Frieza, grunting in pain, quickly caught himself in the air and almost screamed himself at me.

I bent my neck backwards, narrowly dodging a jab, and followed with a sightless roundhouse kick aimed at Frieza head. He ducked it, just so, and I let the momentum of the kick carry me around in the air, and followed through with my other leg, striking Frieza in the back of his head with the heel of my boot.

Eyes bulging, blood projecting out of his every orifice – he almost appeared to be sweating liquid crimson at this point – air screaming away by the force of my kick, Frieza lost the control of his flight as he was sent spiraling towards the fiery grounds below. I, breathing steadily – steadily breathing in the moment, good sir – set in motion.

He caught himself in the air just before he hit the ground, but it was an empty victory of will, for I was in hasty pursuit and immediately slammed him into the ground with my entire bodily strength.

BOOM!

The planet itself moaned in pain as a crater resembling that of a meteor fall manifested itself in the wake of his crash. He tucked and rolled like a rag doll over the barren lands of our battlefield, the fiery pits swallowing his form and hiding him from my vision.

I tracked him with my other senses, but it proved meaningless a second later as a vast source of vitriolic purple light coalesced from within the flames.

Frieza screamed in agony and – suddenly barely a breath away from me – the air itself caught on fire around us, creating an opaque dome of fiery, white-hot liquid. I, beyond thoughts of woe, sensed him move before he did and stormed straight through the white-hot flames, knocking my body into his once more.

He skipped and fell across the desolate floor of our battlefield, submerge anew in flames, and I chased him down through it like a cat chasing the mouse, ignoring the pain, airborne on nothing but a thought and a purpose to defy and conquer.

Grabbing his tail, squeezing hard for the sole purpose of hurting – _hurtin' for hurtin' sake, motherfucker_ – I threw him into the air, ascended out of the flames, and concentrated every fiber of my godly power into a concentrated sphere of energy in the palms of my cupped hands.

" _KA-ME-HA-ME-HA_!"

A beam so vast in boggled all sense of existence coalesced from within my hands and forked across the sky. Little lances-like lighting danced atop its mass, a stark demonstration of a power even I'd failed to fully understand and contain.

He managed to right himself in the air, take notice of my attack, scream something wholly inconsequential, of which sound was muffled by the great tidal wave of noise from my _Kamehameha-wave_.

He threw his hands forwards, one last desperate defence.

It didn't matter.

The arc of pure energy touched him, almost delicately… and swallowed him whole without a second of forgiveness or hesitation, swallowed his being and his screams, and then time itself stood still, as everything stopped moving for a breathless moment in between one perceivable second and the next… and then… and then…

 _BOOM_!

I ascended the air as Namek shook, the grounds beneath me screaming in what almost felt like terror and utter surrender. Thunder, manifesting from the heart of our battle, _screamed_ at the grounds, shrieking pure nonsense as the vortex of sheer power I'd created contended with itself for its short, violent existence.

Then it exploded outwards and even I was flung aside. I noted Frieza's form, and for a wonder there was still a sign of life left in him, fall from the explosion. He fell to the ground, which were no longer on fire thanks to the explosion of energy and the resounding wave of forceful wind.

I, gaining control of my flight, took after him and landed at his feet, beholding his twisting and withering form. Little flashes of cerulean lights danced across his skin, aftershocks of my wild, devastating power. His face showed an agony that was almost horrific, manifesting itself into a corporeal expression of a broken will.

He, tiredly and raggedly and full of slow death coming, managed to raise his head and look at me, and our eyes met – as if for the first time… for the last time.

"Had enough, Frieza?" Finish him, Goku. Come on! Kakarot, kill him! A legion of familiar voices sounded their unanimous demand for me to finish all of this once and for all.

No. That's not what this is about. Never had been.

"How can you…" Frieza paused, choking on a smear of blood, heaving for a measure of air that could sustain him. "How can you possess such strength? How can you be so much more powerful than I?"

"To be honest," I said, grinning – almost sheepishly, almost feeling myself again, "I don't think I'm that much more powerful than you. In fact, measured only in terms of raw power, I still think you have me beat…" At least with a touch more practice, you would have.

"Then… that's a lie! Look at us! I can barely even… touch you… I'm dying… _please_ …"

You're a disgrace, I thought. I sneered, the countenance entirely unfamiliar to me. Somehow, though, right now, it just felt right.

"Control, Frieza – that's all it is. _Control_."

"I don't-"

"I don't know how much you've train to become as powerful as you are. My guess is not much…"

"I never… trained a day in my life."

I blinked. What? I thought. "What?" I articulated that thought. "You serious? Not a single time? And you wonder why you lost? Look, you have been gifted with these powers, born with them, but you never once sought to master them. You just saw your strength and saw that no one in the universe was even close to a match to what you are. You never needed mastery, because you were so far ahead of everything. But, you see, Frieza, I come from the other end of the spectrum. I wasn't born with any special power – hell, barely two years ago, my powers were barely above a thousand on your scouters. But it meant I had to master my strength, my senses, my heart and my mind; I had to fight for every damn inch I could get. I had to lose and lose and lose and keep on coming back just to stay above the rising tides of the times. I've never been truly superior in my entire life – not in the way you've been – and that's why I'm better than you are. I'm not stronger; I'm more skilled. I'm not your worst enemy – your arrogance, which made you blind to your weaknesses, are your ultimate downfall."

I raised my hand, a sphere of energy vibrating and ready, and sent it straight into Frieza, who had closed his eyes and begged for forgiveness.

"Spare me…"

"Spare _me_ ," I said, disgusted by the meager sense of pride he displayed. "I've given you a small potion of my energy – enough so you can make an escape. Let today be your lesson – maybe one day we can fight again." I smirked, wanting to drive the hurting a little further. _Hurtin'_ for _hurtin'_ sake. "As _equals_."

"As equals?" Frieza said, pure hatred and promised violence in his voice. "And you call me arrogant, monkey! You have any idea to whom you are speaking! I've conquered half of the known universe!"

"And today you got your ass kicked by a monkey," I said, turning my back on him. "That must be quite a humbling experience for the ruler of the… of the… what the…"

I froze, eyes looking towards the sky in an awry mixture of growing excitement, immobilizing horror, and heart-stopping disbelief. What I felt was… it just had to be…

"Impossible…" I whispered, noting with a detached part of my senses that Frieza had thrown every last bit of the energy I'd given him into attacking my exposed back. It did nothing. Mattered nothing. What I felt on the other hand… "That simple cannot be…"

A figure, moving so fast through the air I couldn't keep up with my senses, approached us. And, like Frieza, there was not a shred of decency within the energy. But, unlike Frieza, horrifyingly, it was an energy far greater than Frieza's and mine combined and with immense, utter control of itself.

"Frieza," I whispered, a mask of controlled fury touching my face, readying my body for combat by assuming a defensive position, shaking all of a sudden, "I think one of your allies just arrived."

"Huh? What are you talking about?"

I pointed. "Look."

Frieza, tracing my finger, squinted for a second, face open and confused, then horror sprung eternally across his features, and a growing dread settled in the pit of my soul.

"That's Cooler! My brother! Shit… _Fuck_! What's he doing here? I… can barely recognize him…"

Somehow, originating from somewhere unfound, I had a feeling this was going to really fucking hurt.

"Your brother?" I whispered. "You have a fucking brother?"

* * *

Walking the thin black line between consciousness and unconsciousness, I felt Dende trying to shake me awake with his small hands, shake me out of the clutches of my own nothingness.

My own damn blackness.

I felt my body, whole and unscathed, brimming with vigor and energy like never before, ready to go again. Dende had revived me. Saved me.

I was whole again.

"You're truly insane, Goku," a voice said above me. His voice. "Truly, utterly insane. One of these days, you'll go too far, and there will be no one left to bring you back."

"As long as I die the right way," I said, smiling broadly as I sat up, noting that even through a complete healing my eye still throbbed like a son of a bitch, "there will be no need to worry. As long as we win, I can always come back."

"I'm not talking about death. That's the least of my concerns for you, though your rejection of it is still somewhat alarming." Dende, dressed in his usual pristine white robes, craned his neck as I rose and towered over him. To his credit, it didn't seem to faze him the least. "No. I'm talking about you, Goku."

I frowned, confused, brow furrowed in thought. "Well, that much even I gathered."

"I'm talking about who you are, idiot." He paused, seemed to gather his thoughts into something concrete, and continued. "You might end up – no, you _will_ lose yourself in this eternal quest for power. Look at Frieza and Cooler. Look at every unfathomable power that's ever arisen unchecked. It corrupts you. It _must_ corrupt you."

"I disagree." And I genuinely did. "Lots of powerful beings are deeply corrupted – that I agree with. But I don't believe it was the pursuit of it or even power itself that corrupted them. It was their own corruption that led them into the path of power to begin with."

"Goku – you are beating yourself to death every day. All for the singular purpose of self-improvement. How's that not corrupt in any rational sense?"

"I don't know what you mean? What does that even prove? Been doing this ever since before you were even an idea, Dende."

"Should that make it better? Without me here, what would you do?"

"Reign it in a notch, I think. Maybe." I paused, took in his shaken demeanor, and softened my eyes a tad. "Look, Dende, if it is because you don't like seeing me like this, then you know I won't force you to be here, right? I mean, Bulma has improved that Healing Machine thing greatly – I could have one installed in here for me to crawl into afterwards. It would take me a couple of minutes longer than you, but that's okay."

"No. I want to be here. I _need_ to be here. Someone must keep an eye on you."

"Nobody else seems to think so."

"Well, that's because most of the others revere you too much to criticize you – especially her." He nodded in a direction behind me, somewhere just beside and over my shoulder.

"Who – Bulma?" I asked, sensing her approach. "What do you mean?"

Dende looked to the skies above and closed his eyes. "Idiot."

"Hey Blondie," Bulma said, as the door to the Gravity Chamber opened to let her in. "Gohan and Krillin are back!"

"Already?" I asked, ignoring her comment about my blonde hair. I leapt past Dende, glad for the excuse to end the conversation. "Are they all right?"

"They're fine – you can ask them yourself," she said, taking my hand and dragging me with her, and together we left the room. "I've assembled the team for a meeting in five minutes."

"Why?" I felt her squeeze my hand for some reason and fought to not squeeze back in reflex, lest I'd risk grinding it to dust.

Bulma furrowed her brow, troubled thoughts adrift in her mind. "Because I picked up something alarming in my surveillance of Frieza's radio transmissions."

"What?"

"Meeting, Goku. Five minutes. It's easier if I only have to explain it once. It's why we have these meetings, you know."

"But they're so dull and longwinded."

Bulma smiled and stopped. "Stop complaining and act according to your status, _leader-of-mine_ ," she said, almost intoned the last part with a musical rhythm. We were alone in the hallway, barely a breath between us, and I noted that she was wearing only a pair of dark, flat shoes, tight dark-blue jeans and a black tank top, showcasing an all too healthy amount of cleavage, skin lightly tanned from the touch of the three suns.

I had a feeling we should not be here like this. That I should not be looking at her like this. But to be honest, Trunks, I had no idea why at that point.

Her eyes, too, scanned my body up and down for a second; I noted she bit her bottom lip in a manner that seemed almost ravenous.

Is she hungry? I thought, looking down, which revealed that my clothes had broken down to something little less than tatters during my training session, revealing a body marred with rivulets of sweat and dried, hardened driblets of blood.

I looked back up at her, carefully avoiding her breasts this time. Her eyes found mine, confused meeting something indiscernible.

"Goku?"

"Yes, Bulma?"

A pause. I waited, anticipating anything.

"Have you been working out?"

I actually lost my train of thought for a second. Was she serious?

"You only _just_ interrupted my training, Bulma. Why would you ask such a stupid question?"

Was _I_ serious? Maybe, maybe not.

Bulma smirked, and I had a feeling she saw right through me. "Not that I'm complaining about the view," she said, looking up and down again to prove her point, "but you might wanna change into something that isn't completely torn up. And take a bath, you smell like a walking dead."

I nodded. "That makes sense."

"Indeed it does." Dende came up to us, floating by a tendril of a thought on our eye level. "Considering he was halfway there a minute ago."

"One would think you'd be used to it by now," Bulma said, giving the little Namekian a pointed look. "It is, after all, Goku we're talking about."

"You're enabling him."

"Maybe, but I've known Goku for a long time now." It was almost like I wasn't even there, what, with the way they talked about me. "And I can tell you one thing for sure – what you and I or anybody else may think matters very little to Goku, when he has set his sight on something."

"So just let him run amok on himself, that it?"

"Yes." Bulma nodded. "Somehow it usually works out. I can tell you this much – without Goku… none of us would be standing here today. And without Goku – and _all_ of what he is – none of us will be here for long."

"One day he will go too far – and none of us will be able to stop him by then." He turned on the air and headed for the conference room. "See you in five."

"Asshole," Bulma muttered as Dende turned the corner.

"He means well," I said, pushing the door to my room open. "That's all that really matters. See you in five, Bulma."

Giving me one last look of indiscernible intent, she smirked. "See you then, Blondie."

* * *

 _Well, that's the first chapter over with. Second chapter is almost done and will bring further details as to what happened to Goku and his friends. And the actual plot of the story will start to form from there, as well._

 _I don't own any of Dragon Ball and I thank you for reading this far - and reviewing if you did that, too - and I hope to see you again for the next chapter._

 _See you then._


End file.
